science

A helicopter crashed Monday afternoon in Utah’s Wasatch County, taken down by an elk that its crew was trying to capture.

Officials with Wasatch County Search & Rescue said on Facebook that the two-member crew walked away from the crash with minor injuries. The crash took place near Currant Creek Reservoir, which is about 85 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

“The Australian flight crew was in the process of netting a cow elk, which jumped and hit the tail rotor of the helicopter,” according to a statement from Wasatch County Search & Rescue. “This almost severed the tail rotor and ended the flight of this chopper.”

The crew members, who received cuts and bruises, were treated by paramedics from nearby Fruitland and were expected to be fine.

“As for the chopper, not so good,” the statement read. “Not something you see every day when an elk brings down a chopper.”

The helicopter was contracted by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, according to KUTV in Salt Lake City. A spokeswoman for the DWR told the news station that the elk was killed in the crash.

The crew planned to sedate the elk and fly it to have a tracking collar placed on it for later study by biologists, the news station said.

Researchers from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute recently conducted an experiment, published in the Nature journal, to determine how asparagine, the amino acid that builds protein, may be linked to the disease. Foods with higher concentrations of the compound include asparagus, soy, dairy, poultry and seafood.

Scientists then used the mice studies to assess human breast cancer patients. They discovered “the greater the ability of breast cancer cells to make asparagine, the more likely the disease is to spread,” the authors wrote. They said this could also be the case for kidney and head and neck cancers.

“Our work has pinpointed one of the key mechanisms that promotes the ability of breast cancer cells to spread. When the availability of asparagine was reduced, we saw little impact on the primary tumour in the breast, but tumour cells had reduced capacity for metastases in other parts of the body,” the study’s lead author, Greg Hannon, said in a statement. “This finding adds vital information to our understanding of how we can stop cancer spreading – the main reason patients die from their disease.”

In addition to chemotherapy, researchers believe doctors should give patients asparagine-restricted diets to help prevent the illness from spreading. They also want to further their investigations to understand how to make the drug work with patients.

“The next step in the research would be to understand how this translates from the lab to patients and which patients are most likely to benefit from any potential treatment,” study co-author Charles Swanton added. “It’s possible that in future, this drug could be repurposed to help treat breast cancer patients.”

The asteroids were spotted Sunday by researchers at the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona.

The first, dubbed 2018 CC, passed within about 114,000 miles of Earth around 3:10 p.m. EST Tuesday, according to NASA. Scientists estimated the asteroid was 50-100 feet in diameter.

The second asteroid, called 2018 CB, will pass near Earth around 5:30 p.m. EST Friday at distance of about 39,000 miles, less than one-fifth of the distance between Earth and the moon, according to NASA. It’s slightly larger than the first asteroid, between 50 and 130 feet in diameter.

"Although 2018 CB is quite small, it might well be larger than the asteroid that entered the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, almost exactly five years ago, in 2013," Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a news release.

The new study, published this week in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, found that consuming "hot" or "burning hot" tea is linked with a two- to five-fold rise in esophageal cancer, but only among individuals who also smoke or drink alcohol.

Researchers followed 500,000 adults in China for more than 9 1/2 years on average for the study. Regular tea drinkers were asked to describe the temperature of their beverage as "warm", "hot" or "burning hot."

"Drinking hot tea contributed to cancer only when it clustered with smoking and drinking alcohol excessively," Dr. Jun Lv, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Peking University and a lead author of the study told CNN.

Drinking hot tea alone was not linked to higher rates of esophageal cancer.

Researchers behind the new study defined excessive alcohol consumption as 15 grams or more of alcohol per day, which is a little more than the amount found in a 12-ounce glass of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a 1.5-ounce shot of distilled liquor. A smoker was defined as someone who has one or more cigarettes daily on average.

But scientists believe hot beverages may damage the tissue lining the esophagus, which could increase the risk of cancer from other factors, such as repeated irritation of the esophagus and the formation of inflammatory compounds.

"Irritating the lining of the esophagus could lead to increased inflammation and more rapid turnover of the cells," said Neal Freedman, senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who was not involved in the new research.

"Alternatively, hot liquids may impair the barrier function of the cells lining the esophagus, leaving the tissue open to greater damage from other carcinogens," he added.

Other experts have noted the value of the results, while also highlighting the long-term impact of drinking hot beverages.

"I think the results are really important," Catherine Carpenter, an associate professor of clinical nutrition at UCLA, told Gizmodo. "[But] there isn't any question about whether tea in of itself is carcinogenic. It's not about that, it's about having a lifetime history of drinking very hot beverages."

Although the new study does not cast a negative light on drinking hot tea alone, the World Health Organization concluded in 2016 that consuming hot beverages above 149 degrees Fahrenheit is linked to increased rates of esophageal cancer. At the same time, certain types of tea have been been hailed for their potential cancer-fighting abilities.

"It's important to abstain from high-temperature tea in excessive alcohol consumers and smokers for esophageal cancer prevention," Lv told TIME. However, she explained that "keeping away from both tobacco and excessive alcohol use is the most important means for esophageal cancer prevention."

Fish oil has often been touted as an important part of a healthy diet, regularly praised for its numerous benefits. However, new research suggests that consistent fish oil consumption could lead to serious liver problems.

The study, conducted by a group of international scientists and recently published in “The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry” found that long-term intake of sunflower or fish oils damages the liver, potentially causing alterations, which give rise to liver disease. Referred to as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, the form of liver disease is serious and unrelated to alcohol consumption, worsening as an individual ages.

"(Our research) demonstrates that fat accumulates in the liver with age, but the most striking finding is that the type of fat accumulated differs depending on the oils consumed and this means that, regardless of this accumulation, some livers age in a healthier way than others and with a greater or lesser predisposition to certain diseases," Dr. José Luis Quiles Morales, who co-authored the study and works as a professor of physiology at the University of Granada in Spain, told Science Daily.

Scientists behind the study examined how the long-term consumption of different dietary fat sources such as olive, sunflower and fish oils affects the liver of rats. As part of the comprehensive study, the researchers carried out a complete analysis of the liver genome, aiming to establish how it evolved in line with a rat's consumption of different oils.

"The alterations caused by the long-term consumption of sunflower and fish oils make the liver susceptible to NASH," Morales told The Daily Mail. He also warned that NASH is a "very serious disease that may act as a catalyst for other liver diseases such as cirrhosis and liver cancer."

Although many nutritionists have classified fish oil as a super food and it has been previously linked to health benefits, this isn't the first time scientists have suggested it may not be so great.

Previous research has suggested taking fish oil supplements can lower the risk of death from heart disease, while others have found no benefit. A recently published review of data from 10 studies involving a total of nearly 78,000 people, revealed that patients regularly taking fish oil supplements were just as likely to experience a stroke or heart attack within a four year period of time as those who did not, according to Live Science.

Dr. Howard LeWine, chief medical editor at Harvard Health Publishing, wrote in a 2013 blog post that he believes the evidence for fish oils' benefits and risks will be a topic of debate for the foreseeable future.

"Experts will surely remain divided on their opinions about fish oil supplements for the general population. And don't expect any clarity about what to do any time soon. I expect other studies with flip-flopping results in the future," he wrote.

Dr. Giovanni Caforio, chairman and chief executive officer of Bristol-Myers Squibb, said that his company sees the results as "a breakthrough in cancer research and a meaningful step forward in determining which first-line lung cancer patients may benefit most from the combination of Opdivo and Yervoy."

"These findings attest to our deep understanding of cancer biology, leading translational medicine capabilities and commitment to developing new approaches for cancer patients," he added.

The treatment trials are currently in their final phase, meaning the next step is to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market the drug combination as a treatment for this specific condition. A panel of experts formed to assess the data recommended that the clinical trial move forward, despite some modifications made during the trial, according to the company.

According to MarketWatch, researchers made changes to the Phase 3 trial, called CheckMate-227, while it was already ongoing.

Bristol-Myers management addressed the concerns Monday in a conference call, stating that it responded to emerging science and only made changes after conversations with the Food and Drug Administration.

Nonetheless, the company is hailing the trials as "a true example" of "innovation."

The new trials will likely increase the drug's profitability as they further demonstrate its benefits, the company said. However, Seamus Fernandez, an analyst at Leerink Partners, pointed out that it remains to be seen whether combining Opdivo with Yervoy provides better results than taking the drug alone.

For now, Bristol-Myers Squibb is thanking the patients who participated in the trial leading to the "breakthrough."

"We would like to thank the patients and researchers who participated in these clinical trials — without whom this scientific advance would not be realized," the company said in a statement.

It launched from 39A, the same pad used for the Apollo missions. SpaceX’s pad was damaged in September 2016 when a rocket exploded.

The Falcon Heavy rocket was a test launch, costing around $90 million. The heavy lift vehicle can place about 68.3 metric tons in low Earth orbit. The most a rocket has carried to orbit was the Saturn V at about 118 metric tons, used in the Apollo program in the 1960s and the Skylab space station in the 1970s. The most recent version of a single Falcon 9 rocket can lift 13.2 tons.

“If this is successful, this is once again SpaceX disrupting the marketplace and that's a good thing,” Dale Ketcham with Space Florida said before the launch.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has played down expectations for the launch publicly, saying this is a brand new vehicle with 27 engines having to work in sync.

Large crowds were expected for the launch.

“We expect upwards of 100,000 people will come to the community just to see the launch, and that's on top of the people that are already here, including our seasonal guests, so it's going to be a huge crowd,” Eric Garvey of the Space Coast Office of Tourism said before the Tuesday launch.

Here are the main things to know about the Falcon Heavy liftoff:

It is essentially three rockets bolted together to make the heavy vehicle.

It is a test flight.

The middle booster will carry Elon Musk’s own Red Tesla Roadster.

The Roadster is planned be near Mars’ orbit in a precision Earth Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.

The mission will try to prove that it is possible to put payloads into an orbit intersecting Mars. This would help in the mission planned to put humans in Mars.

Musk presented this project in 2011 and he planned to roll out the heavy rocket in Southern California in late 2012. He hoped for a launch at some point in 2013 -- it was obviously delayed.

The rockets were put in position in pad 39A and tested in December 2017.

Falcon Heavy rockets cost a fraction of the price of the future Space Launch System rockets, which are planned to have more lift and throw a spacecraft further into space, to Jupiter and beyond. They will probably not be ready until the mid-2020s.

Each rocket has nine engines, making it 27 engines in total that need to ignite in tandem.

The two side rockets will jettison from the center rocket two and a half minutes after liftoff.

The center booster will continue for a bit longer before engines are shut off.

All three rockets are planned to land back on Earth; two back at the Cape and the heavier rocket at the Atlantic (barge) platform called “Of course, I still love you.”

There is a good chance that this launch may fail.

Falcon Heavy weighs more than 3.1 million pounds (loaded with kerosene and liquid oxygen) and it's about 229 feet tall.

If successful, there will be more heavy launches during the first half of 2018 from Cape Canaveral, too.

Central Florida residents, especially those near the coast -- but as far away as metro Orlando -- may hear a sonic boom.

Can eating McDonald’s French fries cure baldness? It seems far-fetched, but Japanese scientists said a chemical used to prepare the fast-food giant’s fries may restore hair for those experiencing hair loss, Newsweek reported.

A stem cell research team from Yokohama National University used dimethylpolysiloxane, the silicone added to McDonald’s fries, to regrow hair on mice, Newsweek reported. The scientists said that preliminary tests showed that the chemical was likely to be successful on humans, too.

The study was released in the Biomaterials journal on Feb. 1. Scientists were able to produce “hair follicle germs” (HFG) in mass quantities. The use of dimethylpolysiloxane, which is used by McDonald’s to stop cooking oil from frothing, was crucial to the advancement, scientists said.

“The key for the mass production of HFGs was a choice of substrate materials for the culture vessel,” Junji Fukuda of Yokohama National University said in the study. “We used oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS) at the bottom of (the) culture vessel, and it worked very well.”

The scientists transplanted HFG chips onto the bodies of mice, and within days, Fukuda said, the animals were growing new black hair in the transplanted area, Newsweek reported.

"This simple method is very robust and promising,” Fukuda said in the study. “We hope this technique will improve human hair regenerative therapy to treat hair loss such as androgenic alopecia (male pattern baldness). In fact, we have preliminary data that suggests human HFG formation using human keratinocytes and dermal papilla cells."

McDonald’s officials have not commented on the study, Newsweek reported.